


let it go (and pray it comes back to you)

by everest (eternally_winding)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Childhood Memories, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 10:12:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternally_winding/pseuds/everest
Summary: Bucky falls. But it's okay, because any minute Steve's going to come crashing through that door and save him from Hydra.. Right?Or, Bucky slowly loses himself and his memories but he can't forget the smartass punk he fell in love with when they were kids.





	let it go (and pray it comes back to you)

Even when James Buchanan Barnes had nothing, he had Steve Rogers.

When he fell from the train, in the few precious seconds he had before he reached the bottom of the ravine, he didn't think about how he was going to die or how much it would hurt. He thought about Steve. He wondered how Steve would get along in his absence, if the Howlies would take over some of the things Bucky did to make sure Steve didn't get himself into _too_ much trouble, and maybe a little selfishly, if the punk was stupid enough to try and fall in after him in some numbskull attempt to rescue him. As the air bit into the exposed flesh of his face and his ears burned from the whip of the wind, he took comfort in the fact that Steve, facing the loss of his best friend, wouldn't have to face it alone.

He had Peggy and the Commandos, and for all his childish jealousy over the way he caught Steve looking at her sometimes, and her at him, he was glad Steve would have someone to turn to who knew him well enough not to believe his stubborn ass for a minute. He wasn't above wishing that he could tease Steve one last time (or maybe kiss him a little) but these were the cards life dealt you, and you took what you got.

He doesn't remember the events which transpired between falling from the train and winding up in Hydra's clutches (again), but what he does remember is coming to in a room not unlike the one he had been rescued from just weeks prior.

When he came to the realization that he was, in fact, _not_ dead, (and got past the idea that maybe this was some twisted form of the afterlife), something settled in him, a calm similar to that of which when he was set up in a sniper's nest, when it was just him and his rifle and the target. He would be okay. He just had to wait for Steve to come save him. Steve always was saving him, long before project Insight. (Steve would argue that it was _Bucky_ who usually saved _him_ , but Bucky knew that wasn't true.) He just had to wait. Fortunately for Bucky, waiting was kind of what he did.

One week went by.

Two weeks.

Six weeks.

Time stretched on, between interrogations and 'prep work' and the flow of Hydra personnel in and out of his cell. It made sense they would make sure they got every scrap of information he might possibly have to offer (the answer was not much, he was almost, _almost_ as stubborn as Steve) before they killed him. He could prolong his life, as long as he needed to until Steve came to rescue him. Hope bloomed in his chest, a wave of petty giddiness rushing through him at the thought of what Steve would do to Hydra once he realized they had taken Bucky, _again_. He just had to wait for Steve to save him.

Only.. Steve couldn't. How could he? No ordinary person could've survived that fall. And when _that_ settled in, the same day Hydra command got tired of his loyalty and muttered _"Wipe him"_ for the first time, hope left and all-consuming fear took over in its place.

It didn't happen all at once. There was no switch between "Bucky Barnes" and the "Winter Soldier". It was a grueling, often painful process that left him wishing he had died in that ravine more than once.

After the first wipe, the first encounter with the machine that lit every nerve ending on fire and made him feel like he was being fried by electricity, it didn't take much of him. It took more than one session with the torture device to erase parts of himself, he would find out. Even then, the losses weren't noticeable enough to outright define the machine as taking his memories. At first, he thought it was just another tool to get him to talk. But then he more things started slipping away from him, and he wondered if he was losing his mind along with his memories.

But.. he still remembered Steve, and that was as good a victory as he was likely to get.

Steve was his anchor, mooring him to land while he weathered the storm amidst the tattered, fractured remnants of what remained of the other (failed) super soldier programmes. His memories of Steve were an old rose pressed between pages of a book, something to be cared for, delicate; precious.

When the weeks turned into months and his trips to the chair frequented, he would cling to the memories that hadn’t left him yet. When they took Steve’s name from him, he still held onto the fragmented memories of the skinny blonde boy that seemed to start something else in him. (Love? He couldn’t remember if this is what that felt like.) He refused to let go even when the chair took his mum, his sisters, the woman down on the corner that owned the bakery and gave him day-old pastries sometimes. When the rest of his mind was fragmented and bleeding, he clung to Steve.

_(A flash of blonde hair, sticking up in every direction as Bucky ran his hands through it. Laughter, the kind that reminded him of childhood innocence and ease. Small, bony hands smudged with charcoal that meant the boy had been drawing again. Bucky’s thumb brushing away a loose eyelash on the boy’s cheek. Wrapping him up in extra blankets when he got sick, adding his own body’s warmth for good measure, holding him with the boy’s forehead tucked into the curve of his neck.)_


End file.
